Fiona Hodgson is a former Chairman of the Conservative Women's Organisation and was elected a Vice President of the National Conservative Convention last month. She reflects here on what she discovered during a trip to Bosnia-Herzegovina earlier this month.
Visiting Bosnia-Herzegovina last week with the NGO Women for Women to view their programmes for women, it became very apparent that, although it is nearly 15 years since the conflict ended there, and the global media spotlight has moved on to other regions, tensions still abound, justice is yet to be done and differences yet to be solved.
As in every theatre of war, women are affected disproportionately to men. In the aftermath many women are left widows, having to struggle to support themselves and to bring up their children on their own. Organisations such as Women for Women offer a lifeline to these women by giving them training in an income generating project and teaching them their rights, thus giving them a means of support and helping them to stand on their own feet.
The horror of the Bosnian war was bought home to us with shocking clarity when we visited the War Memorial at Srebrenica. It was here that the worst massacre since World War II took place in July 1995. Srebrenica had been designated a ‘safe area’ by the UN and about 25,000 Muslims gathered here to be protected from the approaching Serb army. The 313 UN Dutch troops were garrisoned in an old battery factory at Potocari and were quite overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of people, estimated at around 25,000, who came for shelter. Some of the men tried to escape over the mountains to the city of Tuzla and of those many were captured and killed.
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